FROM

Unless small-scale farms have a plan to upend the most basic principle of
classical economics–not to mention human nature–their endorsement of eating
animals will continue to be, however inadvertently–an endorsement of factory
farming. They will, of course, deny this.

Pink Slime!

I’m sick and tired of hearing stories about the disgusting aspects of
industrial animal agriculture. I know, I know. It’s important to broadcast
these messages—pink slime!, E.Coli! cows eating chicken poop! And, I know,
people need to hear the straight dope on factory farming. Still, these
stories get on my nerves for at least two reasons.

First, they’re redundant, and their redundancy is alarming. It’s alarming
not because the stories themselves are horrific (which they are), but
because the muckrakers delivering these messages act as if they’re
unearthing some deep dark secret and the consumers hearing the messages act
as if it’s never been said before. It’s like we’re living in Amnesia-ville.

Folks! We’ve been bombarded with nauseating narratives about the evils of
factory farming for over 40 years. The fact that we have not, as a
collective gesture of consumer outrage, monkey wrenched these hellholes into
oblivion speaks either to the human tendency to procrastinate or, worse, our
pathological indifference. At some point you have to wonder: are journalists
hacking away at this door to no avail?

Well, they may be, as my second point of contention suggests: I despise
the way that supposed food activists take these stories and cynically use
them to justify a transition to small-scale animal agriculture. This one
really galls me because, in making such a suggestion, the so-called
activists are doing nothing more than feeding the monster they aim to
starve. They fail to realize that all the monster needs to thrive is a
cultural acceptance of eating animals. The activists, in their small-farm
fetishization, do absolutely nothing to confront this pervasive acceptance.
In fact, they only encourage it. In so doing, they encourage factory
farming.

We’ll never beat the devil at his own game. Industrial agriculture is not
in the least bit threatened when earnest “muckraking” journalists come on
the radio or print long stories urging concerned consumers to avoid factory
farmed meat in favor of “humanely raised” and “sustainably produced”
options. To think the big guys are threatened is a joke. The factory farms
will always ensure that the small fetishized farms are never anything more
than boutique options for foodies, culinary libertarians, and pin-heads who
peck away at their Mac’s in college town coffee shops (oops, that’s me).

The factory farms can ensure their dominance for two simple reasons:
consolidation and scale. I don’t like this fact one bit, but it’s a
fact—subsidies notwithstanding, it’s cheaper and quicker and more efficient
to raise animals in concentrated conditions on a large scale. These measures
lead to cheaper animals products and cheaper animal products will, as sure
as gravity, lead to the mass consumption of cheap meat. Unless small-scale
farms have a plan to upend the most basic principle of classical
economics–not to mention human nature–their endorsement of eating animals
will continue to be, however inadvertently–an endorsement of factory
farming. They will, of course, deny this.

And they will, of course, be deluding themselves. Worse, they’ll be
harming animals. Indeed, their delusions are just as complicit in the
senseless killing of billions of animals as are the factory farms they claim
to hate so vehemently. And that gets on my nerves. A lot.

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